From: Tony Smith <tony@...>
Date: 2001-11-17T03:03:58+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:25554] Re: Extension building

On Friday 16 November 2001 16:13, Ed L Cashin wrote:
> Tony Smith <tony@smee.org> writes:
> 
> ....
> > Why not integrate a decent build tool like Jam 
> > (http://www.perforce.com/jam/jam.html) into Ruby directly so that 
> > 
> > (a) you don't need one of the myriad versions of make(1) on your machine 
to 
> > build an extension.
> > 
> > (b) extension developers can just specify their extensions in terms of 
the 
> > libraries and source files involved and let Jam/Ruby take care of the 
build.
> > 
> > (c) You don't need your makefile generator to dance around the 
differences in 
> > the make versions.
> 
> Why not?  One reason is simplicity.  Simplicity and consistency is one
> of the reasons ruby is so cool.  Shoving jam or make functionality
> into it would be a mistake.  (Or cdplay functionality for that
> matter!)
> 
> Also, I use GNU make and autoconf heavily and like them.  Like most
> UN*X developers, I have both of them installed and don't feel the need
> for an alternative, jam specifically, which I don't have installed.
> 
> I am a ruby newbie too, and besides being blown away by how great a
> language it is, I'm also impressed by the internal consistency and the
> lack of apparent feature bloat.  Feature bloat is no fun.

Wow! You're going back a while there Ed! OK, from the depths of my memory the 
(brief) discussion went something like this:

1. Extension building for Windows is very difficult at the moment. mkmf is 
fine on *nix, but doesn't do the job on Windows (or at least I haven't yet 
managed to persuaded it to do the job for me!).

2. Jam/Make/whatever could be included as an *extension* and would not need 
to be embedded in the core. It would just need to be there when you wanted to 
build an extension - hence no bloat.

Just an suggestion though.

Tony